Brand Makeover: Refresh or Rebrand?

A brand can never be a static entity. Changes in external environment, including but not limited to competition, as well as shift in consumer behaviour make it imperative for companies to keep revisiting the brand, in particular, its strength and relevance in time and day. The change however, can sometimes be from within as well. A firm may choose to change its vision and mission, re-look at its portfolio or expand in different market(s) and consumer segment(s). Obviously, an existing brand (and its associated attributes like identity, essence and promise) may fall short of meeting the expectations of the changing world in and around.

Evolution of the Coca Cola Visual Identity over the years

There are multiple ways in which a brand can be made-over to represent its new-found vision and aspiration. This post looks at two such makeover strategies in particular - Rebranding and Brand Refresh, also because these are probably the most misunderstood and incorrectly interchanged terms.

To understand the two terms clearly, let’s take a short caselet.

There are three brands – Air, Earth and Water. All the three brands cater to young audience between ages 18-35 years and are about 10 years old now. Air and Earth are facing some troubles in their sales cycles as well as customer retention and loyalty scores.

Executives from ‘Air’ found out that their Target Group (TG) isn’t able to relate to the brand anymore. The TG has attributed this disconnect to its visual identity (Logo, theme, colour, design). The target audience claimed that the brand didn’t convey a youthful personality and hence has resulted in eroded association and attachment of the customers towards the brand. It felt that the brand has not kept up with time and has remained stagnant in terms of its expression and what it stands for. Conclusion- The brand isn’t preferred by its TG  for its loss of appeal.  

‘Earth’s executive had a worse reckoning with their TG. The customers claimed that they do not associate with the brand anymore and it is for their parents instead. They further added that the competitor has climbed up the ladder in terms of customer understanding, offerings, communication, engagement and even futuristic concepts for them. On the other hand, ‘Earth' is still stuck with the same Brand Identity and older form of communications. 

Conclusion- The brand is ‘there’, but ‘not there’ for its TG ("Not for me").

‘Water’, was in a different boat altogether. Having done well in existing target market for its products, it now aims to appeal to a much larger segment albeit with a different set of products under its current brand. However, it understands that its current brand identity and messaging will not be able to appeal to multiple segments effectively. So, the brand needs to be acceptable to multiple markets and segments.

Hence, what ‘Air’ needs is a facelift. A visual identity make-up which will make it more appealing to its target audience. The values and vision does not change, but the focus is only on cosmetic changes that would make the brand more appealing and relevant to the TG. ‘Air’ needs a Brand Refresh.

Britannia (2018)

However, it is not necessary that only those companies, which face issues as mentioned above go for Brand Refresh. Brand Refresh is often used as a routine strategy by some companies just to maintain a new visual identity that gives them a contemporary status in the target audience to avoid brand fatigue.

Godrej (2008)

Some of the examples of Brand Refresh globally are Google, Verizon, and Starbucks. Back home, Britannia, Godrej, Star TV and HUL have adopted a simple Brand Refresh strategy. While there may have been associated communication for their brand refresh launch, these were mostly cosmetic changes to be contemporary. 

‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ have bigger problem and opportunity respectively at their hands though. They requires much more than a cosmetic retouching, something which is deeper and affects the core and values of the brand. The change would attempt to make the brand relevant, not just by its visual identity, but with its newly framed (or communicated) brand promise and even culture to the customers. These brands will see a structural change in how they look at the customers, what the brand will stand for and what does it intend to be for its customers. ‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ need Rebranding.

India Post (2008)

Rebranding can occur with or without any name, design or logo change (unlike Brand Refresh). Some of the examples of Rebranding globally are Old Spice (in 2010), Apple (post 1997 when Steve Jobs took over) and Walmart (From “"Always Low Prices," to "Save Money. Live Better" in 2007).  In India, companies like Airtel (To tap a larger audience through their internet services), Hero (Post split from Honda in 2011), India Post (“Giving wings to your dreams” campaign trying to tap youth) and Incredible India(Show India in a different light) have taken the Rebranding route for their respective brands.

An interesting perspective on Rebranding is presented by the 2018 winner of REBRAND  GLOBAL 100 AWARDS, Brand Bhutan. The video shows how a tiny hillock nation is trying to rebrand itself for its products and services, a shift from its earlier branding of a scenic and spiritual country. This way, one unified, overarching country brand has been  developed for Bhutan. Click for more details on the Rebranding campaign -  Brand Bhutan.
  

Finally, Rebranding and Brand Refresh are brand makeover strategies but should not be confused as being one and the same. Brand Refresh is a cosmetic change which essentially deals with the look and feel of the visual identity of a brand. It does not look at structural and architectural changes of the brand and does not affect its brand promise (at least not explicitly). Rebranding on the other hand is much deeper. A Rebranding strategy cannot be undertaken without making structural changes to the brand. It also leads to subtle changes in brand promise and brand identity, which are propagated down to the target audience through cues and messages, implicit as well as explicit.

In the next post, we'd look at what are the other brand makeover strategies and when to use which one?

Starbucks at it again: When people throw lemons at you, make lemonade!

Leaders aren’t those who never make mistakes. Leaders are those, who make mistakes, accept them and learn from them to make better decisions in future.

Does the recurring issue with Starbucks over sensitive topics like race and sexual orientation reflect a flaw in its corporate culture and leadership? Or the way these issues are handled by the company makes a case for a sensitive, progressive and forward looking organization?

While there can be arguments on both sides, it for sure will be biased towards latter. This for a simple reason that these issues have not kept Starbucks away from standing for what it believes in. Also, it has always responded to controversies with a calculated yet sensitive actions which make it the company people look up to for its values.

There have been multiple stories about Starbucks being the vanguard of progressive workplace values in this new service world. Its initiatives like health insurance to part-time workers and to hire 25,000 veterans were path breaking ones in the industry. It was also one of the earliest organizations to support the cause of gay marriage in spite of resistance from some of the investors.

Its employee friendly policies came to light again when after the corporate tax cut in the US, Starbucks expanded benefits to its employees in terms of monetary support and family leaves. Its coffee procurement policy and practices across the world have been much lauded for empowering local farmers.

It is surprising then, that such a progressive company, consistently finds itself on the wrong end of controversies on very sensitive topics. While Its failed #RaceTogether campaign in 2015 and the ‘Holiday cups’ controversy in 2017 were more on symbolic aspects, the recent controversy where cops were called on two black men waiting in the café, was more serious in many ways. This because a store manager was involved in supposed racial profiling and then a knee jerk reaction of calling cops on these men. Her actions were said to be prejudiced due to the race of the men in question. Unlike other incidents, where Starbucks found itself in soup due to miscommunication or mis-perception of its proactive initiatives, this time it was in controversy for actions that went against its self-proclaimed ethos and values of equality.

However, like always, Starbucks has come out with utmost humility and accepted its mistake graciously, which in itself is a mark of excellent corporate values. Not just that, they did something which was unheard of till date. In response to the incident which laid bare the unconscious racial bias which some of its employees may carry, all Starbucks owned outlets in the US, 8000 to be precise, were shut and the employees were engaged in a four-hours racial-bias training on 29^th of May 2018. Starbucks created the curriculum and the video for this training, which is now available for everyone.

Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz in an interview said, "I don't know of another company in the history of American business that's done anything remotely close to this". While this step was seen as being transformational by him, many people doubt the credibility of a four-hours training to be able to change racial bias in people. Virtual Training in itself, is considered a weak tool for achieving behaviour change. While this may be true, but two strong benefits of this response by Starbucks are – 

•          Starbucks’ response has created a template for service recovery for other comapnies across industries to follow. This also becomes now a more of a hygiene response to address such issues in future; and
•      This has again brought to fore the sensitive discussion about racial profiling and bias in businesses which needs a consistent acknowledgement and addressal

Starbucks in particular, after their call for this action, has established itself as a truly progressive company while also accepting that it does have flaws too but it is ready to accept them and work on them to be better. It has also showed that being socially conscious is not about one initiative here and there. It is about imbibing this behavior in your core values and be ready to take the pain that comes with this promise.

Starbucks has done that with utmost brilliance time and again, and it has been able to do this because it doesn’t push its mistakes under the carpet, but accept them publicly and promise itself and its stakeholders to be better in future.

Customers love companies who act like good human beings. That is companies which are kind, moral and ethical in conduct and most importantly, aren’t scared of their flaws and being vulnerable. Customers love companies which are like them, not perfect but committed to be better. That’s why they love Starbucks!

EpicFail #StarbucksRaceTogether

A seemingly well intentioned campaign to encourage conversation on 'race' at the starbucks has gone supremely awry.

Why should a benign act of trying to encourage conversation on coffee about a very sensitive but recently battered issue face such backlash? With the benefit of hindsight, the answer is simple - Inability to on-board your internal and external stakeholders, both on emotional as well as practical aspect.


The Baristas who were to set forth the campaign by tagging and encouraging people to write "Race together" on their coffee cups, were never on-boarded. It came across as a irrelevant exercise for them which made their daily job more tiring with no visible change.

This gap also led to a sense of insincerity to flow across, right up to the customers which led to what is explained in the next paragraph, revulsion. Great campaigns can fail if your field team is not convinced about the vision and objective of the campaign. To add, ease and practicality of implementation must be thoroughly planned and demonstrated before pushing the campaign down the chain up to the foot-soldiers, to avoid making it a boo boo.

 Race is a sensitive topic and with the recent flare ups in US on the subject have led to an open yet sometimes an ugly debate with opinions and counter opinions being blasted. While the intention may be absolutely honest, this sudden campaign rubbed the general public the wrong way as it did come out as a marketing gimmick.

As mentioned above, there was no serious attempt to actually diffuse tensions and encourage positive environment. The operational way of tagging #RaceTogether(rather than an emotional effort by the Baristas) made the customers feel that Starbucks is trying to piggy back a sensitive issue for its own marketing advantage.

The campaign is ordered to be halted prematurely.

Lesson learnt the hard way!